[FTC]: "Keep it simple, stupid:" design ideas seemingly ignored in FTC

[electron]

Hello all!
I was thinking the other afternoon about design ideas and concepts for Get Over It this year, and I realized something:

FTC seems to ignore the rule of "Keep it simple, stupid (KISS)" and other "rules of thumb" that FRC teams follow.

When I was in FRC, simplicity was key to a solid, competitive robot, as it usually meant fewer things could break, less weight, lower cost, and less time spent designing/testing/building/fixing. Yet, as I look at the FTC robots for this year's game, very few of them were truly simple. A quick look at the robots of the Technoguards, Landroids, or Say Watt, and it seems the word "simple" is not the their vocabulary!
So here is my question for you all:
Does an emphasis on simplicity have a place in successful designs in FTC?
If not, why? Is it due to the longer build season? The kit parts? or is it just the complexity required by the game?

PS, feel free to share your design mantras and rules of thumb here.

[Andrew Remmers]

On our team we normally have a few iterations of a mechanism before it reaches its final stage. However I think the simplicity of the robots corresponds with the game. We decided to design something quite interesting and its floating around the forums already, but we designed a coaxial crab drive to play the game. Again i'll say it was never built (yet) but it started incredibly complex, but as the students worked it got simpler and simpler (for what it was). Also I think that with FTC kit being smaller people are encouraged to experiment with things to see what the kit can actually handle, I am one of them. But over all in FTC i think it comes down to elegance of design over simplicity.

but thats my 2 cents

- Andrew

[JesseK]

The TETRIX metal hole patterns aren't simple, ergo it is difficult to make a simple effective robot that uses the TETRIX metal as its frame. Einstein's daughters (and many others I'm sure) who 'appear' simple are so because of the extra materials allowed for use in FTC. Their 2009-2010 robot was a perfect example.

My $0.02

[Coach Doug]

For my team - I think there is a direct relation to season length. We like to compete at one of the earlier events and then compete as often as logistically/financially able.

Therefore we end up with iteration waves; true engineer approach that we are never " done" - it can always be better. If our season length was more like FRC - this would not happen. I think our designs would be more singular function based ( i.e. - flawless design for one baton heigth vs. one mechanism that works for all )

The FTC season length allows this (1 month between tournaments ) and the game or how the game is played evolves too - all this results in some level of evolution between competitions.

Season length - that is a different topic.

[TRWSHSHLX]

Captain of the World Champion Alliance this year was 178 SD30 robotics. There robot was simple, really simple with a speedy effective drivetrain and a single pivot arm with a servo attached bucket (to tilt) with a lego motor at the end to dispense.

That's the only robot at world's I can think of that's simple though.

I think in the beginning of the season, most teams explore their options a bit since they have more time. And it really depends on how the game evolves into. From last year's experience my team's direction was to be fast and score as much baton as possible. But as it turns out, autonomous, scoring pre-loads and balancing with goals can win you a state championship practically anywhere...

Related to that, when most teams try the KISS philosophy, they think about what's the simplest thing to do but also award big points. In GOI! is scoring pre-load (30 points), crossing over / balancing in autonomous (10 / 15), and balancing with / without goals (10 / 20).

If a single robot can successfully do that, then they will score 50 - 65 by themselves and I'm confident that score is higher than at scores at World's. Just by ONE robot.

If an alliance is consist of two robots like that, they can score 90 points easily. And that's in the 95% to 98% tile of the scores at World's. There's less than a handful scores that's higher than that.

And scenarios above are without dispensing batons in autonomous / scoring batons other than the pre-loads.

GOI!'s scoring objectives are highly "non-linear"... What that means is after the simple things that can earn you big points, there's this huge gap to the next objectives that will make your robot better. Those objectives takes more time than the beginning ones (because they're not as simple) and most teams usually ran out of time.

I personally am very disappointed in the scores at World's... Last years game was nail-biting because both sides have to score till the end...

Some robots like my team's (3237) and Say Watt's robot were build to score a lot and as it turned out that was not necessary and it's difficult to score a lot because of the challenge itself.

For rookie teams, KISS should be emphasized. A rookie team can do extremely well in GOI! with the KISS principle (One school had 2 rookie teams and they were picked by the 1st seed in Oregon State Championship). All they did was scored the pre-load consistently and went over to the other side.

The TETRIX parts are just so big... and there's no variety... That kind of play a factor in this matter I think. All they have for construction is channels... As for VEX there are C channels, angles, chassis rails, of different sizes... But I do love the power of the TETRIX motors though... Way too easy to burn one out / break the gears inside but they are powerful.

Some of my teams' / clubs rules of thumb:
Figure out what to do before how to do it (Originally from JVN)

Something that never went wrong before is going to go wrong at a competition (tested MULTIPLE times, and no, there's no way you can avoid it. The best you can do is be prepared and ready)

Break everything that's breakable in the robot before the competition / in practice so you can fix them so they won't break during the competition

Cutting and bending parts are a luxury for the week before competition... not throughout the whole season

ROBUST!!! FTC is interactive and everything needs to be robust... (not having a servo actuated arm sticking out 10 inches of the robot for people to hit)

And many others... I should probably start another thread for tips / stuff like that before I keep rambling on... I feel like most of the things I said should be in the FTC book that's published by Pope John. Never read the book though. Anyone want to buy a copy for me?

[PAR_WIG1350]

Another factor is that the size of the electronics doesn't scale too elegantly so the robots look more complex, also, the lack of a defined bumper perimeter that marks the edges of the robot adds to this.

Now that I think about it, nothing scales elegantly from FRC to FTC. The metal, sensors, controllers, batteries, motors, and, to a great extent, the gears. An FRC gear train can be incredibly complex, yet completely hidden from view. The gears in FTC are so proportionally huge that the only place to put them is where they are easily visible. and even a 2 stage reduction can seem ridiculously complex while it is a typical sight in FRC.

[NalaTI]

Originally Posted by electron

A quick look at the robots of the Technoguards, Landroids, or Say Watt, and it seems the word "simple" is not the their vocabulary!

The Techno Guards' robot this year and last were definitely not "simple", but they were what they needed to be based on the design concepts that the team came up with.

When the team started this year, they wanted a simpler robot than last year's incredibly complex one. But they also wanted to do something really cool. The game itself required a relatively complex manipulator, and the rest of it just happened. In reality, the final mechanism of each of the subsystems ended up simpler than the prototype.

The Techno Guards motto has always been "OK, it works, now take it apart and build it right". That has always led to things that look more complicated, but actually are simpler - just with more customization. The mechanical guys got very used to hearing "that's a great idea, it just means that to put it in right, you have to rebuild this part too...".

Simple is good, though... the Face-Off robot was simple, and it was able to do everything that the team wanted to do for the game. (http://technoguards.org/node/211)

[team F.T.C 4240]

(I didn't read any of the comments and its 11:15 at night) Our goal every year of FTC is a simple but effective robot, and that is what we went into judging with, if you look at our robot you can see after taking a good look that our robot is very simple compared to most and it worked very well (when it wasn't pushing the field) like for getting the bridge down we just ABS on the wheels (worked nicely and just adding on to an existing peace) also having a peace the can do more the one thing like our arm, we use it to collect/score/block/get over the bridge no matter whats on it and we are happy with the design, but what im saying is in FTC it is good to be simple but effective and it hasn't failed us yet well anyhow, I can not wait until September and its just a guess but I think most everyone else can't wait as well

[normalmutant]

Oh hey there Joe.

Originally Posted by electron

When I was in FRC, simplicity was key to a solid, competitive robot, as it usually meant fewer things could break, less weight, lower cost, and less time spent designing/testing/building/fixing.

Well, those last ones are very true for FTC. However, in our experience, just because a robot is more complicated does not mean that it breaks more often. During Worlds our robot only burned a servo. This is because we designed many fail-safe mechanisms and programming safeguards.

Originally Posted by electron

...or Say Watt, and it seems the word "simple" is not the their vocabulary!

In FLL, we used the KISS principle. And we would lose.

[team F.T.C 4240]

Originally Posted by normalmutant

In FLL, we used the KISS principle. And we would lose.

I don't think just being simple is the only thing, I think the main think that will help is time, as in working on the robot a lot. We do have a longer build season then FRC which makes so we don't need to come almost every day to work on the robot, but you also don't want to do one practice once every 2 or 3 weeks. In build season we do 2 practices a week from 4 to 9 (unless we need more) then after our first competition we cut the practices down to once a week from there on after.

I'm just sharing my thoughts on a "good" robot. (that doesn't mean it is but these are just my ideas of when I think of a "good" robot)

Simple (less stuff can break/more reliable)

Quick (not necessarily talking about the drive system. But so you don't waste a ton of time trying to dispense/ score)

Effective (as in for this year collecting without losing 10 batons trying to collect 5, and scoring consistently)

And Robust/shielded (so defense robots can't mess up/damage you're robot as easily, and so stuff doesn't break as easily, also if you are shielded and have a geared down drive system then you can score and protect yourself)

I don't think just being simple is the only thing. This year our goal was mostly to build a good robot and not worry about judging as much (because at Worlds we most likely aren't going to get any type of an award), but this is just my thoughts on a "good" robot, everyone else might have other ideas but this post is just to help define a "good" robot (in my eyes)

Hope it helped ~Derrick

[normalmutant]

Originally Posted by team F.T.C 4240

I don't think just being simple is the only thing, I think the main think that will help is time, as in working on the robot a lot.

Well, our team didn't start working on our final robot seriously until over new year's. Though I guess you're right about the time - we had some long meetings until like 2am.
Another thing that we did was go to as many competitions as possible. Robots mess up more at competitions, so we went to as many as possible so we could find out what the problems were and address them.

Originally Posted by team F.T.C 4240

Simple (less stuff can break/more reliable)
Quick (not necessarily talking about the drive system. But so you don't waste a ton of time trying to dispense/ score)
Effective (as in for this year collecting without losing 10 batons trying to collect 5, and scoring consistently)
And Robust/shielded (so defense robots can't mess up/damage you're robot as easily, and so stuff doesn't break as easily, also if you are shielded and have a geared down drive system then you can score and protect yourself)

Quickness was our problem this year. Not necessarily with driving, but with strategy and getting lined up to score in time. Of course, it didn't help that most teams would defend against us like their life depended on it.

[electron]

Originally Posted by normalmutant

Another thing that we did was go to as many competitions as possible. Robots mess up more at competitions, so we went to as many as possible so we could find out what the problems were and address them.

From what I saw this year, I think this can really be the key. My team didn't attend enough competitions this year, and we never managed to work out the kinks in our robot as a result.

Also, thanks for all of your input so far everyone, I really appreciate it!

[TRWSHSHLX]

One definite benefit of going to more competition this year is the team will build up more experience with Samantha / connection issues. Many teams have routers setup for practices but it's always different at competitions since there're interferences.

[NalaTI]

Originally Posted by normalmutant

Another thing that we did was go to as many competitions as possible.

This was the first year that we (Northern California) have had qualifying tournaments before the state tournament. Our qualifiers started October 31 (yes, 7 weeks after the challenge was released -- hello FRC!) and went into December. A team could compete in as many as they wanted as long as there was space. Then the FTC Regional was held early in January.

This made that NorCal Regional Championship crazy tough. Most of the robots that were there had been through at least a couple compete/revise cycles by that point. This is evidenced by seeing how many of them did well elsewhere. PHOENXTRIX (3509) Inspire Award in Vegas and Winning Captain in Montana; Antipodes (4529) - Winning Captain in Montana, RCGFofPL (4238) - Finalist Captain in San Diego.

Going to as many competitions and scrimmages as possible isn't just important, it's almost essential!